The only lack of Kalelealuaka and his comrades was animal food (literally fish) but they supplied its place aw well as they could with such herbs as the tender leaves of the popolo, which they cooked like spinach, and with inamona made from the roasted nuts of the kukui tree.

1975, L. R. McBride, Practical folk medicine of Hawaii, page 67:

Popolo is a branching green herb with a tendency to being woody at the base. This annual grows one to three feet high on cultivated land and is regarded as a common weed.

There was a racial order that existed even in this group of tweens. They teased that Chad and I were popolo, Hawaiian slang for black people. Popolo are shiny berries that grow in clusters in the islands and are so black that they shine purple on branches.